Hotels are one of the oldest and most common forms of business enterprise in rural Saskatchewan. The fact that Saskatchewan’s tenacious old hotels still stand on the corners of Railway and Main is a testament to the determination of the people who have owned and operated them over the past 100 years - and to the fact that they haven't burned down!

Sunday, 16 March 2014

Maple Creek's oldest continually operated business, the Commercial Hotel, is truly a community treasure. Thanks to a group of new immigrants from the Philippines, this heritage hotel has been recently restored to its former glory. Today's visitors can still get a sense of
the hotel’s rich history as a result of the atmosphere and furnishings that
have been preserved in the hotel lobby.

Marcelo Del Barrio, Jayson Catalasan, Ronald Del Barrio, and Noy Lim, hold a painting of the original hotel built in 1884/1885. Source

UPDATE: The Commercial Hotel closed in April 2017 and put up for sale. http://leaderpost.com/news/saskatchewan/heartbreak-hotel-closure-of-maple-creek-landmark-leaves-investors-creditors-crying-foulHotel on the Ranching FrontierThe story of the Commercial Hotel began on November 23, 1883 when Thomas
Melfort Rasin, purchased Lot #3 on Block #2 (on the original town plan) in
Maple Creek. The hotel was constructed of logs and faced will milled lumber. By 1885, it was in
operation. The 1886 Territorial Directory billed the Commercial Hotel as “The largest hotel in
the Northwest Territory, T.M. Rasin proprietor, first class in all its
departments.”

Thomas Rasin, originally from Maryland via St. Paul, Minnesota, came to
the Cypress Hills area around 1880 as a clerk for the T. C. Power & Bro. Company store
in the village of Fort Walsh. T.C. Power opened a new store in Maple Creek
after the Northwest Mounted Police abandoned Fort Walsh in 1883, and Rasin followed.

Backed by the company's managers, Horace A. Greeley and D. W. Marsh, Rasin also acquired Lot #4 - the lot between the T.C. Power
store and the Commercial Hotel. Eventually, the hotel would expand onto a
portion of this lot. The 1888 land title
document consolidating ownership of Lots #3 & #4 in the name of Thomas
Rasin shows a $1,169.67 mortgage registered against the properties by Horace A.
Greeley.

The original hotel c. 1885. Submitted photo.

Rasin sold the Commercial Hotel to Edward Fearon on August 18, 1890; Lot #4 was sold to James Baird on March 2, 1898. Fearon, who was elected to the
Territorial Assembly in November of 1894, sold the hotel to John
Henry Fleming on Christmas Eve 1896. A
little over two years later, Fleming also acquired Lot #4 from Baird.

Fleming was an American
cowboy who had worked as a foreman on the Oxarart Ranch upon coming to
Canada. He later had ranching interests
in the Skull Creek area, was a partner in the Williamson & Fleming Store at
Maple Creek in 1903 (now the Salvation Army Thrift Store). Canada’s 1901 census shows
Fleming, age 36, living in the Commercial Hotel with his wife Mary and their
two children. Hotel staff in 1901 consisted of two bartenders and four
chambermaids.

The Commercial Hotel’s only competition in Maple Creek during the 1880s
and 1890s was the International Hotel, built by J. J. English in 1883 on the
east corner of Jasper Street and Pacific Avenue (destroyed by fire in August 1896). Between 1902 and 1904, however, the Cypress
Hotel, the Jasper Hotel and the Maple Leaf Hotel had all been constructed and
the aging Commercial Hotel was no longer the establishment of choice in town.
In A.M. Merton 1904 booklet called The New West Era he refers to the Commercial Hotel as a “dollar house” under the management of the Henderson-Downer system
(which owned the Cypress Hotel).

According to the Maple Creek News editor W.J. Redmond, it was around this time that Fleming decided to once again
“make the Commercial the best hotel in town.” Around 1906 the original wooden Commercial Hotel structure was moved back
on the lot and a large three-storey brick addition was constructed on the front
of the hotel. This addition is represented today by the beverage room and
everything above it. The location where
the original wooden building was attached to the new brick addition is still
visible at the back of the hotel.

The 1906 section of the Commercial Hotel. Submitted photo.

In 1910, Fleming sold the Commercial Hotel to Norman Robson., who immediately started to work on a second expansion. His addition to the east
encroached onto Lot #4 and is represented today by the current lobby, dining
room and everything above them. The new
addition opened on August 30th, 1911. The next day, the Maple Creek News provided the following account:

"The
new addition of the Commercial Hotel was put into commission yesterday and
Maple Creekites have good reason to be proud of the Pacific Avenue hostelry. The
ground floor is taken up by the rotunda and dining room. Both rooms are
spacious, finished in golden oak, well lighted, and modern in every
particular. New mission furniture in the
dining room adds greatly to the attractiveness. The rotunda and the bar room
have tile floors. Upstairs the new bedrooms have the advantages gained by
plumbing and eight of them have baths in connection. The house now has 52 rooms
and is steam heated throughout. The old rotunda is being overhauled and will be
utilized for a pool and billiard room. The owner, Mr. N. L. Robson is to be
congratulated upon the appearance of the Commercial, and it is more than likely
that his efforts to keep the hotel up to the requirements of a growing town
will be appreciated by the public."

The 1911 Canada census shows
Norman Robson, age 30, living in the hotel, along with his wife Mable and six
staff members. Four of the young women on the hotel staff worked in the dining
room. Perhaps Lela, Miriam, Katie, and Lizzie served the splendid Christmas dinner
in the hotel’s new dining room that year. The menu offered stewed oysters,
shrimp patties, salmon, fillet of sole, ham with champagne sauce, duck, lamb,
chicken, beef, turkey, goose, and every possible side dish. Countless desserts
were served at the end of this sumptuous holiday feast that was topped off with
port & sherry.

Unfortunately, the “new mission furniture in the dining room” referenced
by the Maple Creek News did not
survive to furnish today’s Commercial Hotel’s. However, the lobby in 1911 must have looked very
much the way we see it now. The Commercial Hotel’s beautiful lobby furniture
would have originally been in the circa 1885 wooden hotel
structure. It would have then been reused in the lobby of the 1906 brick
addition, and then again in the 1911 lobby where it remains to this day. The
1911 marble tile floor has also survived with very little loss over the course
of the last 103 years.

On December 31, 1912, just over a
year after opening the new addition, Robson sold the hotel to William
McRoberts, Jeremiah McRoberts, Thomas Battell & William Battell, all from
Moose Jaw. It appears that William
McRoberts came to Maple Creek to oversee the consortium’s interests, while
Jeremiah McRoberts went on to own and operate the Royal Hotel at Weyburn. The
McRoberts brothers bought out both of the Battell brothers’ interests in the
Commercial Hotel by September of 1917.

Weathering Hard Times

It was during this time that Prohibition
started in Saskatchewan. Click here to see blog post. This meant hard times for the hotel
business. On June 10, 1919 Sophia Richardson & James Wilson
bought the Commercial Hotel. After a struggle
to keep the hotel afloat, Wilson lost his interest to the Land Securities
Company of Canada Ltd. on March 30, 1921. Nine months later, his partner Sophia bought
out his interests from the security company. Unfortunately Sophia Richardson
lost the Commercial Hotel to the Bank of Montreal on March 9, 1927.

The former billiards room/beverage room was converted to house the bank's Maple Creek operations. The
beer cooler currently used in the Commercial Hotel beverage room is said to
have been the bank vault. The Bank of Montreal moved
out of the Commercial Hotel in 1932, although the bank continued to hold the title
to the hotel until 1945. This stands to reason, as this period spans the Great
Depression and the Second World War years. Matt Fleming operated the Commercial
Hotel between 1927 and 1945. It was Fleming who adopted the hotel's motto, "Your Home on the Range," around 1935.

Fire plan c. 1930 shows the hotel with all its original sections. Submitted image.

In the spring of 1940 the original section of
the Commercial Hotel was torn down. Maple CreekNews editor W. J. Redmond lamented the loss in a May editorial. It appears that by
1940 the original section of the hotel had fallen into disuse. Redmond wrote that “the old original log building, tucked away behind, has
been gathering cobwebs and paying taxes to the Town without doing anything to
justify its existence.” He stated
that although “the accommodation didn’t amount to much, judged by present
standards, [it] was O.K. in the days when men wore whiskers and drank
their whiskey straight.”

The Commercial Hotel went through several
owners between 1945 and the early 1970s. These owners included John “Scotty” MacLaren (1945); Hazen Bonser (1945
to 1947); Frederick, William and Alvin Ehnis (1947 to 1956); and Louis Liepert (1956
to 1973). Sometime during the 1960s additional hotel rooms were built in the
original dining room space.

On July 31, 1973, Bent Sorensen bought the
Commercial Hotel and embarked on a major renovation project. The dining room on
the main floor was reintroduced by removing the hotel rooms that had been built
in the space. The hotel’s street appearance was updated, and the rooms on the
second floor were “modernized” so that they all had baths. The official opening
of the newly renovated Commercial Hotel occurred on January 2, 1976, with Maple
Creek’s Mayor Harrigan cutting the ribbon in the presence of a number of
dignitaries.

The modernization of the second floor rooms
obliterated virtually all of the circa 1906 and 1911 features from that area of
the building. However, the circa 1906
and 1911 doors, baseboards, mouldings, trim and burlap wainscoting on the third
floor of the hotel all managed to survive.

After hotel ownership changed a few more times,
Sam and Darlene Boychuck bought the Commercial Hotel in 1986. The Boychucks did
an admirable job of ensuring that the heritage character of the old hotel
remained intact. During the Town of Maple Creek’s Centennial of Incorporation
celebrations in 2003, the significance of the Commercial Hotel to the history
of the community was officially recognized on one the town’s commemorative
centennial coins. The Boychucks have the distinction of being the longest
owners of the hotel in its 120 year history. After 20 years, the couple sold the
Commercial Hotel to Young Han Shin in 2006. The hotel was then sold to Chung Lee.

Flood of 2010 and Aftermath

Lee continued to preserve the heritage features
of the building; however he had the misfortune of owning the hotel at the time
of the disastrous flood of 2010. The flood caused extensive damage to the lower
levels of the hotel, forcing it to close for the first time in its long
history. Lee struggled to recoup his losses and reopen the hotel, without success.

At the end of 2012, Lee sold the Commercial
Hotel to a group of Filipino investors who had recently
immigrated to Canada, settling in Maple Creek. The
seven stakeholders – Noy and Marchelle Lim, Jayson and Alneena Catalasan and
Agnes, Marcelo and Ronald Del Barrio – formed Licadel Hotel Group Ltd. and made
big plans for the hotel. They began a rehabilitation of the century-plus heritage landmark.

Noy
Lim, a classically trained chef, told the Maple Creek News that
the restoration of the hotel is a way for them to give back and thank the
community for welcoming them as newcomers. “When we

first arrived here in Maple
Creek, the town really welcomed us with huge smiles and embraced us,” he said. “So
it's not always that you're on the receiving end. You have to give something.”

The
hotel had sat vacant for two years after the 2012 flood filled the basement and
main floor with water. The Filipino
group began by cleaning the entire building, stripping carpet and some walls. They
then embarked on a complete upgrade of the hotel in an effort to bring it up to
modern standards, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of its
history. “We'll try to make it look as
much like a Western-Victorian hotel as possible – not fancy, but like you're
travelling back in time when you walk into the hotel,” Lim explained.

The Town of Maple Creek designated the
Commercial Hotel as a Municipal Heritage Property on February 26, 2013.
Since then, the Maple Creek Main Street
program and the Saskatchewan Heritage Foundation have assisted the Filipino
investors in their efforts to restore the Commercial Hotel.

In the spring of 2013, the Maple Creek News reported that labourers were
laying bricks along the building's exterior facade. Original bricks removed
during repairs to the back of the hotel were reused on the front facade.
“It made us quite happy,” said Lim. “The bricks are in quite good condition, so all we have
to do is clean up the paint on the bricks to bring out the colour of the bricks again.” The biggest surprise was the discovery
by construction workers of windows in the north
wall of the bar which had been covered for 30 years. "The windows were the
biggest surprise a few months ago," said Lim.

Reopened for Business

A rustic, saloon-style bar at the Commercial Hotel
opened in the summer of 2013; the hotel itself reopened in December of that
that year. In February 2014, the Licadel
stakeholders were presented with Maple Creek’s Business of the Year award, as
well as the award for excellence in heritage conservation.

“Your
Home on the Range” for more than 130 years, the newly renovated Commercial
Hotel now has 14 guest rooms (standard, superior, deluxe, and honeymoon suite),
complete with Wi-Fi and continental breakfast. The dining room, which seats 50, features specialty international cuisine prepared by Chef Noy Lim.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall has said that Lim and his partners in the Commercial Hotel are close friends of the whole
province. After the flood of 2010, the
Premier noted, everyone was convinced that it was closed for good. Licadel's
team of seven, doing a lot of the work with their own hands, brought the hotel
back to its former glory. “The Commercial Hotel takes you back to that era,”
said Wall. “It’s a special place, a very special place.”

About Me

One of my favorite activities was traveling around the southern half of Saskatchewan with my digital camera. My favorite photo subjects were old small-town hotels. I am the former the Executive Director of the Saskatchewan Western Development Museum.

Acknowledgements

I could not write this blog without the local history books from all the little villages and towns throughout the province. I am indebted to the web site, Our Roots, for digitizing many Saskatchewan local history books, and to the libraries that preserve these rich resources on their book shelves.

I am sorry that Google News Archives is no longer searchable. It still provides free access to scanned newspapers, including full issues of the major Saskatchewan papers, going back to the 1800s, but it no longer has a search engine. You have to browse, which is not really practical for my research purposes.

“I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.”